William Tell
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William Tell is a legendary folk hero of Switzerland. He is known for shooting an apple off his son's head.
Tell is arrested for not saluting Gessler's hat (mosaic at the Swiss National Museum, Hans Sandreuter, 1901)
Tell's leap (Tellensprung) from the boat of his captors at the Axen cliffs; study by Ernst Stückelberg (1879) for his fresco at the Tellskapelle.
First page of the Tell legend in the White Book of Sarnen (pp. 447–449)
A depiction of the apple-shot scene in Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia (1554 edition)
Albrecht Gessler
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Albrecht Gessler, also known as Hermann, was a legendary 14th-century Habsburg bailiff at Altdorf, whose brutal rule led to the William Tell rebellion and the eventual independence of the Old Swiss Co
William Tell
…for shooting an apple off his son's head. According to the legend, Tell was an expert mountain climber and marksman with a crossbow who assassinated Albrecht Gessler, a tyrannical reeve of the Austrian dukes of the House of Habsburg positioned in Altdorf, in the canton of Uri. Tell's defiance and tyrannicide encouraged…
Swiss folk hero William Tell shows Gessler the bolt he meant to kill him with.
François-André Vincent, William Tell Overturning the Barque of Gessler, 1795